29/02/12

Final Media Product - Love on The Fifth Floor

12/02/12

Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we originally filmed our piece, we looked back on it and realised that there wasn't much of a story to it, and that it wasn't dramatic/exciting enough for an opening sequence. Although we did like the way the black and white worked, we decided that the costumes didn't represent our theme of Film Noir.

We then went on to re-film our piece, working on a more dramatic opening based on the Roal Dahl book 'Lamb to The Slaughter' which we felt could represent the theme of Film Noir well, this was because we could show a typical 1950s housewife and her relationship. This was also beneficial to our piece as we could include typical 1950s Film Noir clothing, such as the suite for the male, and the high waisted black skirt, white shirt, heels and red lipstick. This adds to the consistency of Film Noir throughout the piece.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

In our piece we subverted the stereo typical expectation of the male being in control of the woman, this is shown in the image to the right which is a screen shot from our media product. This show the male looking at the female attentively whilst the female then proceeds to ignore this and walk past the male. We decided to include a relationship between the male and female to keep with the typical Film Noir features, but also put our own twist onto it whereby the woman ends up murdering the male. In our story the female is represented as being strong minded and having the upper hand, whilst the male is more affectionate towards the woman but gets turned away. This is similar to the relationship between the female and male in a typical Film Noir film 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' (pictured to the right, second down) where you can clearly see the male trying to be affectionate towards the female, and the female looking un-interested, showing the power being in her hands. This could be juxtaposed to a screen shot from our piece, also pictured to the right; whereby you can see a very similar relationship between the male and female. This helps us to convey typical features of a Film Noir film in our piece.

In this scene we used an over the shoulder two shot, this helped to show the relationship between the couple, as well as enabeling the audience to see it from both characters perspectives.

The image to the left is of the costume we decided to use for the female character in our piece, we felt that this would represent our choice of Film Noir as a genre, we also used heels as this is a notable feature in most Film Noir films.

The image to the right is of a modern twist on the typical Film Noir costumes, this is partly what we based our final costume on. It features a black high-waisted pencil skirt, white shirt and heels, which all feature in the costume we used. This presents the female as being quite glamorous, but also adds a sense of mystery to the character.

We also decided to keep the male outfit within the theme of Film Noir, this included a suite, white shirt, tie and a trilby hat which is a notable feature of the 1950s time period.

To the right is an image of an original Film Noir costume for a male, which is very similar to the costume used within my media product, both feature a shirt, tie and trilby hat which adds to our theme, and also genre. Our theme is crime/mystery, so the suite is quite appropriate and adds to the theme of our media product.

Pictured to the left is the costume we used, we managed to find a very similar trilby hat to the one pictured to the right, as well as a shirt, tie and suite trousers. This helped us to portray Film Noir through he visual costumes.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?

Whilst making our media product we decided that Warp Records would be the best suited hypothetical distributor for our media product, this is because they've had several successful low budget 'one-off' films, which are fairly similar to ours.


Warp, commonly referred to as Warp Records, is a pioneering independent British record label, founded in Sheffield in 1989, notable for discovering some of the more enduring artists inelectronic music.


Founded by Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell from their experiences working at the FON record store, alongside record producer Robert Gordon, the label (whose name was chosen because the original name, 'Warped Records' was difficult to distinguish over the telephone) soon became home to artists who would be influential in electronic music.

Submarine is a good example of a film distributed by Warp Records, produced on a low budget that had been hugely successful.

Submarine has been said to have set off a new genre of film, along with television programs such as Skins. The BBC reviewed the film mentioning that 'Submarine has already received favourable reviews, with Sunday's Welsh premiere at Swansea University's Taliesin Arts Centre coming a week ahead of its UK-wide cinema release.' which shows how variable the reception can be from films that are produced and distributed by the same company/label. 

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product would generally be young adults aged between 16-35 years old, they would have an interest in crime/mystery films and also have a little bit of knowledge on Film Noir. We came to this conclusion after looking back at the results from our questionnaire's and making the pie charts of results. Doing this we found out the most of the people we asked would rather watch a film on Film4 than Sky Movies, also shown in our results is the fact that not that many people have seen a Film Noir based movie before, so when making our film opening we had to take into consideration that many of the viewers would have very little knowledge on the idea behind Film Noir.

  We also found that people felt costumes and props are key to a successful media product. When we originally filmed our piece we looked back and realised the costumes let it down, we then went on to re-film our piece taking more care in the props and costumes used within our media product. We wanted to portray a more modern take on the original Film Noir costumes, as we were planning to aim our media product at a audience of young adults. When doing this, we decided to dress the female in a black high waisted skirt, heels, white shirt and red lipstick. This portrays a typical Film Noir outfit for a female, but with a modern twist to attract our target audience. To the right is a picture of a modern Film Noir outfit for a female, this is similar to the costume we decided to use in our piece, which is also pictured to the right.

Whilst making our media product, we had in mind that Film4 would be the most suitable producer for our piece, this is because this is a fairly low budget, and often shows 'one-off' film productions produced by low key producers

Within the group we discussed whether our media product would be best suited to Sky Movies or Film4, and also featured these in a question within  questionnaire. When gathering up our results we found that 60% of our target audience, would much rather watch a film on Sky Movies rather than Film4. When making our final decision on the hypothetical distributor for our media product we chose Film4, although more people said they would rather watch a film on Sky Movies, we felt that Film4 would me the more appropriate distributor for our genre, and our media product as it would be shown on a 'one off' basis, and is also fairly low budget.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?


We attracted our audience using a questionnaire to enable us as a group to make some decisions on the distributor, genre, and costumes to use within our media product. The questionnaire was in a simple format so that it looked quick and easy to fill in for our target audience, we handed out a total of 10 questionnaires which all got returned to us with feedback to help us develop our piece. 


As a group we felt that it was important to find out how knowledgeable our audience was on the theme of Film Noir, to do this we featured 'How much do you know about our genre: Film Noir?' as a question. The feedback we got showed that most people had little knowledge on the genre (70%) with only 20% of the 10 people we asked saying they had good knowledge. This is something we went on to consider whilst making our media product. We decided that whilst we wanted to convey a clear Film Noir film to our product, we also wanted to add a modern twist in order to attract a larger audience. To do so, we made the costumes more modern, and added a twist to the storyline; making the female the more controlling/powerful character within our piece.


Once we had finalised our media product, we wanted to find out what our target audience thought of it. We did this by asking them a series of questions:

Audience Feedback

1. What was your favourite part of the film?

The murder

2. Does the film opening make you want to watch the rest of the film?

Yes, the voiceover also makes you want to know more about the story.

3. Did you enjoy the plot?

Yes, students understood the story. 'I liked the reference to the Roal Dahl book 'Lamb to The Slaughter?'

4. If you could change something about it, what would it be?

Not using bacon as the weapon, maybe a leg of lamb.

5. Do you think the music was effective?

Yes, the voiceover worked really well. Two A-Level media students said that ours was much better than their AS media product.

We also recorded one of our audience feedbacks:

This was good as we could find out what worked well in our media product and what our target audience thought. One of the best pieces of feedback we got, shown in this clip, was that she picked up on the fact that we'd subverted the stereo typical representation of the male being the one to commit the murder, whereas in ours it's the female. Hannah (the person being interviewed) said that she thought that this worked well.

6) What did you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of constructing our media product, we all learnt skills in filming and editing. We tried to share the work load as much as possible, each having ago at the filming and editing within the making of our film opening. Within the group we tried to share roles within editing equally, I focused more on the titles and opening sequence to our piece. We decided as a group to go for a simple font so ensure we don't distract from our chosen genre of Film Noir, in doing so we also decided to keep titles to a minimum, only having actors names, film titles and the production company. This helped to make our piece look professional.

iMovie was a key program that i've developed skills in whilst making our media product. We each took on different roles within editing, to ensure we all shared the work load equally and each gained skills. We edited our media piece to shorten it, change the colouring to black & white (to fit with our genre of Film Noir), edit the transitions, and also add a voice over and background music.

To find music that wasn't copyrighted we went on sights such as SoundCloud, this was good as we could find some music that fits in with our piece and know that it's not copyrighted. 

We then looked at Music4YourVids.co.uk to look at more music that wasn't copyrighted, here we found a music to use for our media product.

We used parallel non-diegetic sound within our pice to add tension to the scene, we also used a non-diegetic voice over, this is a narration that went over the top of our film opening to add to the plot. The voice over is of a police man that was called to the house after the murder took place, this helps unravell the plot and give the viewer an understanding of past events that may have taken place.

In terms of camera movement, we used a shot-reverse-shot to show the relationship between the couple, this is a technique commonly used to one character looking at another, this worked well with the over the shoulder medium close up two shots that we used, both of which potray the female character having the dominant position within their relationship.

When editing sound to fit with the visuals of our media product, we used fades and equalisers to alter the levels, this helped to create a sense of tension and atmosphere within the opening. A fade is a common convention within Film Noir, it can be used to show time progressing or give the montage effect. The fade used within our media product 'Love on The Fifth Floor' is shown between the time 0:23 - 0:26 (pictured to the right) is an example of where we have used a used a quick fade out, this is used within the transition of the narrative from one scene to another.

We wanted to make sure that the opening sequence to our media product kept the viewers attention as this is key within a film opening. To ensure that the auience didn't lose relevence of the narration used within our piece, we muted the entire clip leaving no diegetic sound. However, this meant we needed to find sounds to fit with the water running and the footsteps, to do so we used iMovie to provide us with synchronous sounds that were appropriate for our piece. This was successful as it was almost un-noticible that they weren't the original sounds within the sequence.

  

7) Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


Since we filmed the preliminary task, I feel the group on a whole has developed skills in camera angles and movement, as well as allocating specific tasks to individuals in the group to ensure the work is completed to the best of our ability. This has helped us develop our media product as we had more of a plan on how to film it, and were more prepared. When filming our main media product we made a large storyboard (pictured to the left), this helped us to plan the script, story, sound and camera movements for each scene.

We went through each scene, drew a rough sketch of what we'd like it to look like, and then made a description; this described what the scene would consist of and any diologue that would be in the scene, as well as positioning and movements on the characters behalf. We then looked at the camera; shot size, camera angle and movement. As well as organising us for the filming of our media product, it also helped us to learn more of the technical terms and put them into practice. This helped us when it came to filming as we had a good knowledge of what we wanted each scene to look like and what we needed to do.

07/02/12

Film Noir Research

http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/glossary/index.asp

 This is a site I've been looking at to find out what the key features of Film Noir are, and how they work. From this I've selected a few which I'm aiming to include in my media product.

Point-Of-View (POV) Shot
A shot taken with the camera placed approximately where the character's eyes would be, representing what the character sees.

To the left is an example of a point of view shot, it shows the audience what the character is looking at. I feel this could be very effective in a two shot with a couple, this would help link in the genre of film noir to the point of view shot, as a typical convention of film noir is a femme fatal and her relationship with a male. 

Femme Fatal is the french term that literally means "fatal woman”; an irresistibly attractive woman who leads men to destruction.

Flashback
An alteration of story order in which the plot moves back in time to show events that have taken place earlier than the one already shown.

Voice Over
Voice overs are recorded dialogue, usually narration, that comes from an unseen, off-screen voice, character or narrator who can be heard by the audience but not by the film characters themselves; narration often conveys the character's thoughts, either as a “voice” heard within one's head or as other narrative information and commentary; often a technique in Film Noir.

I think that the flashback and voice over could work really well together, to explain the flashback in the opening of our media product I think that the voice over could explain a previous argument between a couple, represented by the flashback. This would help us to include two more conventions of Film Noir within our piece.

29/01/12

Research - How to make a good Film Noir

Below is a link on how to make a good Film Noir piece.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYb2gN00dg

 

27/01/12

Film Opening Analysis - In a Lonely Place

Here is a link to the opening of In a Lonely Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-B4x7eeh-g 

Contextual Information	In a Lonely place is a typical 1950s film noir, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, produced for Boghart;s Santana Productions. Bogart starts in the film as Dixon Steele, a cynical screenwriter suspected of murder.
Representation	In a Lonely place starts a femme fatal ‘gold-digger’ The main character in ‘In a Lonely Place’ is instantly recognised by female at stop lights suggests he could be a well-known man, also recognised by the valet outside Paul’s, who is surrounded by even more people later in the film.
Sub Genres	· Crime · Film noir · Drama · Murder mystery · Romance
Camera	There is a MEDIUM LONG SHOT as Dixon drives down the main road, this allows the viewer to observe the scene and the characters limited body language. Birdseye shots are also used as Dixon pulls up to Paul’s to show the viewer the man in his car.
Sound	The sound within ‘In a Lonely Place’ is typical of the late 1940s. Non-Diegetic music is used to introduce music into the extract. Exteral-Diegetic sound is used as Dixon Steele and the femme fatal exchange words throughout.

27/01/12

Film Opening Analysis - Sunset Boulevard

Here is the opening to Sunset Boulevard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQNh_m3YIBc

Contextual Information	Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir  named after the boulevard that runs through L.A. and Beverly Hills, California. The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, an unsuccessful screenwriter, Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star who draws him into her fantasy world where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen with Erich von Stroheim as Max Von Mayerling, her butler and ex-husband.
Representation	Within Sunset Boulevard there are many different representations, which would be worth considering when planning our media product. There is the representation of upper class throughout, this is shown by the celebrity status within the film ‘One of those great, big houses you’ll read about it in late editions I’m sure’ There are also the representations of an upper class male, however we also see in reference to the dead man in the pool, the male being described as ‘nobody important really’. This show’s their upper class attitudes within the film.
Mise-En-Scene	Mise-En-Scene is key within any film noir, but is particularly notable within Sunset Boulevard. Costumes are key throughout—police, homicide, squad, detective clothing. The lighting in the film is natural which helps to create a sense of realism.
Camera	There is a birds eye shot used as the police pull up to the house, this helps to show the setting and the surrounding action. There are many different camera movements within Sunset Boulevard, there’s a long distance establishing shot of the road at the start of the film as the homicide squad pass along the road, the camera movement is shakey to make the audience feel asthough they’re part of the scene.
Sound	There is diegetic and non-diegetic sound used throughout the whole of Sunset Boulevard. There is diegetic sound of piercing sirens. Non diegetic music is used within the voice over to keep the audience up to date with what’s happening ‘It’s about 5 o’clock in the morning’. There is also non-diegetic music used within SBV, this is slow paced, deep music that’s in the background.

02/02/12

Final Continuity Piece